WITH 31 peo­ple killed by the police just two months into 2017, the Independent Commission of Investigations (INDECOM) says it is wor­ried that the coun­try could record more than 200 such killings for the year. According to sta­tis­tics released yes­ter­day by INDECOM dur­ing a press con­fer­ence at its offices on Dumfries Road in Kingston, 19 peo­ple were shot and killed by the police in January, while anoth­er 12 were shot and killed in February.

Assistant INDECOM Commissioner Hamish Campbell said January’s fatal­i­ties rep­re­sent­ed a 55 per cent increase over last year, which saw only sev­en fatal shoot­ings by the police. Another 11 peo­ple, Campbell said, were also shot and injured dur­ing the first two months of the year.

WITH 31 peo­ple killed by the police just two months into 2017, the Independent Commission of Investigations (INDECOM) says it is wor­ried that the coun­try could record more than 200 such killings for the year. According to sta­tis­tics released yes­ter­day by INDECOM dur­ing a press con­fer­ence at its offices on Dumfries Road in Kingston, 19 peo­ple were shot and killed by the police in January, while anoth­er 12 were shot and killed in February.

Assistant INDECOM Commissioner Hamish Campbell said January’s fatal­i­ties rep­re­sent­ed a 55 per cent increase over last year, which saw only sev­en fatal shoot­ings by the police. Another 11 peo­ple, Campbell said, were also shot and injured dur­ing the first two months of the year. http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​I​N​D​E​C​O​M​-​w​o​r​r​i​e​d​-​a​b​o​u​t​-​f​a​t​a​l​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​s​h​o​o​t​i​n​g​s​-​f​o​r​-​f​i​r​s​t​-​t​w​o​-​m​o​n​t​h​s​_​9​0​960

One of the reasons Jamaicans are so predisposed to using violence as a conflict resolution mechanism is our inability to do deductive reasoning.
Now I know this will draw howls of condemnation from the opinion police who will tell me I cannot make a blanket statement about a whole country.
To those I say I spent 31 years of my life living in Jamaica and I still interact with Jamaicans every day, I have that right.

There is no greater barom­e­ter for mea­sur­ing the rot and decay which has infect­ed Jamaica than the com­ments direct­ed At Lisa Hanna the for­mer Minister of Youth in the past People’s National Party Administration and mem­ber of par­lia­ment for St. Ann South Eastern.

This writer and this medi­um stand solid­ly beside Lisa Hanna on her posi­tion that degen­er­a­tive music should not be played on Radios or on Television.
Ms. Hanna has been exco­ri­at­ed and abused ver­bal­ly for dar­ing to speak to some­thing many in her own par­ty has not spo­ken to , includ­ing the leader of her par­ty and for­mer Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller.

Not only has Ms Hanna been ver­bal­ly assault­ed, she has report­ed to the police that the degen­er­a­tive cretins who hero wor­ship DJ Adidja Palmer (Vybes Kartel) are threat­en­ing her life.
Understandably peo­ple who dare to have an opin­ion out­side the nar­row pri­mal world­view of the semi-lit­er­ate mass­es are going to become a tar­get of their venom.
As an opin­ion writer I have cer­tain­ly had my share of vapid push-back and even death threats direct­ed at me.

None of that non­sense has ever caused me to lose any sleep.
In the first instance peo­ple can take your life they can­not kill your ideas.
Secondly many of those who make threats from the obscu­ri­ty of anonymi­ty would­n’t dare speak that garbage to my face.

Nevertheless I was real­ly impressed with Lisa Hanna’s response to her detrac­tors whose only response to intel­li­gent dis­course are threats of violence.
Responding to the death threats Ms Hanna said this:

“When it comes to women’s, and espe­cial­ly children’s rights, I speak out with­out fear of any reprisal,” “I pray that all Jamaicans who val­ue com­mon decen­cy will find the courage to push back against this new nor­mal and defend Jamaica’s true cul­ture. If we lose this bat­tle, how­ev­er unpop­u­lar the bat­tle or its choos­ing may be, we will have lost Jamaica.”

We are pre­cip­i­tous­ly close to los­ing Jamaica I am afraid , so even as I stand with Hanna on this issue she has been part of an Administration which has done much dam­age to the rule of law in our country.
Nevertheless as a Jamaican I refuse to allow par­ti­san polit­i­cal views to col­or my reac­tion to whats hap­pen­ing on this issue.

The Jamaican Prime Minister has all but abdi­cat­ed his respon­si­bil­i­ty on crime by (1) announc­ing some pin-prick mea­sures which are not worth the paper they are writ­ten on ‚and (2) By announc­ing that he will not be allow­ing the Police to go out and aggres­sive­ly do their jobs.

Lets not lose sight of the fact that a Government’s pri­ma­ry role is the safe­ty and secu­ri­ty of it’s citizens.
It must be on that basis and that basis only, must any judge­ment of the Prime Minister’s effi­ca­cy be judged.
Clearly Holness has decid­ed that hold­ing and solid­i­fy­ing pow­er is more impor­tant that break­ing the back of the epi­dem­ic of mur­der and rape of inno­cent chil­dren , women and the most vul­ner­a­ble with­ing the society.

Without attempt­ing to speak for Ms Hanna who is quite capa­ble of speak­ing for her­self, here are a few facts .
There is no ques­tion that Adidja Palmer is a tal­ent­ed disc jock­ey , I say that because many of the com­ments around this issue are that peo­ple are envi­ous of the artiste.
Of course Like I said ini­tial­ly, those are knee-jerk respons­es from those who can­not artic­u­late an intel­lec­tu­al or rea­soned response.

That said, this dis­cus­sion has less to do with Vybes Kartel and more to do with the con­tent of his work.
Now there are those who say that Palmer is not the only artiste to record music from behind bars.
True . But regard­less of local­i­ty, regard­less of geog­ra­phy, when­ev­er an artiste, a Writer or any­one else, is allowed to con­tin­ue their trade or even start to do so from behind bars, it is because the con­tent they are releas­ing is one of mea cul­pa and reform.
“It can­not be music made by a con­vict­ed mur­der­er which con­tin­ue to spew degen­er­a­tive invec­tive which cor­rupt the minds of the young and impressionable.

A con­vict so priv­i­leged under­stands he/​she is allowed to do so as part of his/​her resti­tu­tion to society.
It does not include under any cir­cum­stances a sce­nario in which said artiste gets to con­tin­ue doing harm to society.

Before we deal with all of that we must explain one thing.
A cit­i­zen who com­mits a crime and has been law­ful­ly con­vict­ed in a court of law, has by def­i­n­i­tion of that con­vic­tion sur­ren­dered many of his/​her rights.
There is a sim­ple way to avoid los­ing ones rights in that way.
Do not com­mit crimes.

The fact that Vybes Kartel’s music is play­ing on radio and tele­vi­sion is not a prob­lem which should be laid at the feet of Kartel.
It’ is a sear­ing indict­ment of the cor­rupt nature of the agen­cies of Government and the crim­i­nal­ly com­plic­it nature of our coun­try’s lead­ers who lack the char­ac­ter and moral for­ti­tude to shout down cor­rup­tion and crime in all it’s forms.

This ker­fuf­fle would be a good time for Andrew Holness, in the process of bi-par­ti­san­ship, to stand beside Lisa Hanna , effec­tive­ly throw­ing the pow­er of his office in a push-back against the forces of anarchy.
Of course the urge to gain trac­tion and score cheap polit­i­cal points are far more impor­tant than show­ing a uni­fied front against degen­er­a­tive behavior.
Many of the com­ments on this issue are absolute­ly wor­thy of dis­cus­sion , even though at their core they lack cer­tain basic understandings.
Sure Kartel did not car­ry a record­ing stu­dio with him to prison , it is naïve to make that con­tention at a time when an artiste can voice lyrics on a cel­lu­lar device , save the record­ed lyrics onto a data card and send it out to be worked onto a tract and ulti­mate­ly to be distributed.

Despite this there has been report­ing in some Jamaican medi­ums on November 16^th of last year that Kartel was removed from the Horizon Remand cen­ter to the Tower street Prison.
Some have insist­ed that he was moved in order to facil­i­tate his abil­i­ty to con­tin­ue record­ing . Others have stri­dent­ly argued that his music which has con­tin­ued to dom­i­nate local air­waves were record­ed before his incarceration.
As far as I know there are no laws which pre­cludes a vis­cous con­vict­ed mur­der­er from record­ing after his incar­cer­a­tion. But com­mon sense ‚and com­mon decen­cy on the part of Jamaican author­i­ties would have pre­vailed , pre­vent­ing vio­lent mur­der and misog­y­nist lyrics from invad­ing pub­lic air­waves, and cer­tain­ly be dead sure that no mur­der­er could con­tin­ue to do so.

This is big­ger than Vybes Kartel or any oth­er con­vict , so to the die hard legions of Kartel fanat­ics , we hear you and to some degree your insis­tence that this was hap­pen­ing before Kartel are indeed true..
But even as we con­cede your point you must sur­ren­der the notion that a con­vict, any con­vict , have the same God-giv­en or con­sti­tu­tion­al right enjoyed before conviction.
You must divest your­selves of that ridicu­lous notion.

Jamaica is the way it is because of weak-kneed lead­er­ship and in many cas­es lead­er­ship which is indis­tin­guish­able from the crim­i­nals in the garrisons.
Many Jamaicans includ­ing Kartel’s legion of fanat­ics do trav­el to oth­er countries.
When they do they obey the laws of those host nations. Those who don’t gets kicked out.

They end up back in Jamaica, a place where they are allowed to pro­mul­gate and per­pet­u­ate anarchy,mayhem and murder.
Successive Administrations of both major polit­i­cal par­ties, includ­ing the present one , have con­sis­tent­ly refused to remove their hands from med­dling in law enforcement.
In fact it is rea­son­able to argue that they have active­ly enhanced the process­es which allow for the astro­nom­i­cal crime rate and the law­less­ness which exist today.
Both by actions they take and in some cas­es actions they refuse to take.

Bob Cameron PhD in Criminal Justice from Walden University wrote.
It’s actu­al­ly prob­a­bly not a good idea to put peo­ple togeth­er in a prison, but our options for pun­ish­ment are fair­ly lim­it­ed. Actually, pris­ons are an improve­ment over ear­ly pun­ish­ments that involved pri­mar­i­ly putting peo­ple to death for any­thing and every­thing (see the Code of Hammurabi for some fun details about that). 
The use of pris­ons has changed con­sid­er­ably over the years, but they are essen­tial­ly the same as they’ve always been in terms of being grad­u­ate schools of crime. Placing crim­i­nal­ly-mind­ed folks with oth­ers who share the same world­view can be very coun­ter­pro­duc­tive. But, there are impor­tant rea­sons that we con­tin­ue to use pris­ons, and there are some emerg­ing ways to reduce the risk of recidi­vism among incar­cer­at­ed offenders.
First, it’s impor­tant to under­stand that prison is not all about chang­ing peo­ple’s behav­ior, con­trary to pop­u­lar belief. There are actu­al­ly five gen­er­al­ly accept­ed goals of sen­tenc­ing (ret­ri­bu­tion, deter­rence, inca­pac­i­ta­tion, restora­tion, and reha­bil­i­ta­tion) the first three of which are accom­plished pri­mar­i­ly through incarceration.

Murderers are sent to prison because some soci­eties are not allowed to kill them. This is gen­er­al­ly so in some lib­er­al soci­eties here in the west­ern world.
For sev­er­al rea­sons some log­i­cal, many west­ern nations have declared a mora­to­ri­um on killing murderers.
The default process then is to incar­cer­ate no mat­ter the clar­i­ty of the evi­dence, no mat­ter the heinous nature of the killings.
Fine , so we alter­na­tive­ly and stu­pid­ly embark on an expen­sive process of incar­cer­at­ing mur­der­ers, regard­less of the grue­some nature of their crimes, regard­less of the amount of inno­cent lives they extinguished.

We do so as soci­eties because we have acqui­esced to the most lib­er­al view­points. We have bowed to those who osten­si­bly places soci­ety at a dou­ble disadvantage.
(1) From the harm done as a result of the killing of an inno­cent mem­ber of soci­ety and (2) forc­ing soci­ety to pay for the care of that mur­der­er for as long as he/​she lives.

It is that crim­i­nal cod­dling point of view which brings us to hav­ing to engage in a con­ver­sa­tion of this kind where those with the most crim­i­nal­ly sup­port­ing view points push­es the enve­lope on what fur­ther accom­mo­da­tions and crea­ture com­forts may be giv­en to con­vict­ed murderers.

Convicted crim­i­nals have no right to record music. They may do so con­sis­tent with the nation’s laws and rules gov­ern­ing indi­vid­ual penal systems.
There are many state­ments made on this issue to the effect that peo­ple should be allowed to prac­tice their craft whilst incarcerated.
That is a mat­ter for respec­tive leg­is­la­tures , yet I would not be sur­prised that some­thing as left lean­ing as this would become law in a place like Jamaica.

In oth­er coun­tries what­ev­er a pris­on­er gets out­side food, health­care and hous­ing has to be earned . This means that they are priv­i­leges not rights. In fact in many nations pris­on­ers are forced to work to earn their most basic keep, that includes the food they eat and oth­er costs accu­mu­lat­ed from hous­ing and car­ing for them.
Most impor­tant­ly, in the event a par­tic­u­lar con­vict has ‚through good behav­ior earned a priv­i­lege, say to record music, those priv­i­leges would be con­tin­gent with cer­tain pre­de­ter­mined cri­te­ria that good qual­i­ty-con­tent be adhered to.
News flash to the peo­ple who say it is cen­sor­ship. When you are a con­vict­ed crim­i­nal every­thing you do is censored.
Where,when and if you are allowed to sleep, eat and yes ‚where and when you shit.
Where do you believe your right to make or release music stand on that totem pole?

The ques­tion for the Jamaican Government is how much longer will it allow the tail to wag the dog?
This Prime Minister has had a year to detail with clar­i­ty, a path which out­lines with clear speci­fici­ty the Administration’s plan to get rid of crime.
To date there has not been a cogent or spe­cif­ic out­line which one could look at and rea­son­ably con­clude that the admin­is­tra­tion is seri­ous about crime.

Instead, what we have are band-aid approach­es and a bunch of Tom-fool­ery com­ing from the Prime Minister and even more so the Minister of National Security .
Be it under­stood that the Primary func­tion of any Government is the utmost safe­ty of it’s citizens.
How could this Administration come to Government with­out a leg­isla­tive agen­da which when enact­ed would imme­di­ate­ly bend the arc of crime, bring respect back for our insti­tu­tions and a sense that anar­chy would not be tolerated.
Out of that Agenda would emerge an econ­o­my where peo­ple in the dias­po­ra are con­vinced to return to invest ‚con­sumer con­fi­dence is up and for­eign investors bring in big mon­ey for invest­ment opportunities.
That is how an econ­o­my is built.

The Prime Minister is sad­ly delud­ed in believ­ing that his so called growth agen­da can be accom­plished if he adamant­ly refus­es to take a stand against crime. Nothing he has done on crime dif­fer­en­ti­ates his admin­is­tra­tion from the past administration.

Sooner or lat­er there will be change , whether the Prime Minister believes this or not is real­ly not up for debate any longer .
Jamaica will not be allowed to have a sit­u­a­tion in which almost 1600 peo­ple are mur­dered each year. Countless amounts of women and young girls raped and sodom­ized, and crim­i­nals do pret­ty much what they please because the lead­er­ship is too con­sumed with it’s own abil­i­ty to hold onto power .

Recently Prime Minister Andrew Holness told young ladies quote “stop the dag­ger­ing.”
The Prime Minister, clear­ly con­cerned about the high mur­der sta­tis­tics and the numer­ous cas­es of assaults and mur­der of teenage girls and women, sought to offer some degree of guidance.

“The guys who are doing this ‘Daggering’ dance, they are cre­ative, but they need to under­stand that what they are pro­ject­ing into the minds of our chil­dren is that vio­lence is accept­able. And then that becomes the pro­jec­tion of Jamaica over­seas that we are a vio­lent peo­ple. And, then, you have a dis­pute, and the only way to resolve the con­flict is what you have been taught com­ing up for years. Box him down! Stab him up!” Holness warned.
 “We have to stop this. The new dance that has evolved now… I don’t have noth­ing against the cul­ture… I am a big reg­gae fan, and I lis­ten to dance­hall. And, I tell you some­thing, we can­not allow vio­lence to take away our true cul­ture, and that is being pro­ject­ed as the cul­ture of Jamaica. We must stand up, talk to the enter­tain­ers, talk to the pro­mot­ers”.

Immediately after mak­ing the state­ments a pha­lanx of anar­chist unleashed an onslaught of out­cry against the Prime Minister with a vari­ety of ver­bal assaults.
One wrote that the Prime Minister should go fix the econ­o­my and leave dance hall alone.
Apparently, the men­tal midget does not under­stand that the Prime Minister has a respon­si­bil­i­ty to lead in all aspects of nation­al life.

He igno­rant­ly assailed the Prime Minister total­ly unmind­ful, or con­ver­sant of the fact that there can be no real eco­nom­ic activ­i­ty in this bloody car­nage which has tak­en over our country.

GOONS AND ANARCHISTS SHAPING POLICY…

As if assail­ing the Prime Minister was not enough, the angry mind­less trolls who can see no fur­ther than their base desire to fill their bel­lies with food and wine then engage in ani­mal sex are out for the blood of Lisa Hanna.
Lisa Hanna is the for­mer Minister of Youth in the past Administration and mem­ber of Parliament for St. Ann South East.

Ms Hanna recent­ly called for the ban­ning from the air­waves, some music of Imprisoned DJ Adiijah Palmer O/​c Vybes Kartel she con­sid­ers improper .
It did not take long for the idol­a­trous vul­tures to begin cir­cling, wait­ing to pluck the flesh from her for dar­ing to speak out against their God, A blast­ed con­vict­ed mur­der­ing scum.
In addi­tion to the mind­less trite com­ments against Ms Hanna, the Police are report­ing that some of the hea­thens are actu­al­ly threat­en­ing her life .

Lets begin by say­ing that con­vict­ed mur­der­er Adijjah Palmer have no right to record music as an incar­cer­at­ed felon.
Allowing a con­vict­ed Murderer to con­tin­ue to live on the inside as he did out­side is a shock­ing indict­ment of the endem­ic cor­rup­tion and crim­i­nal­ly com­plic­it nature of our Government structures .
It turns the entire con­cept of puni­tive incar­cer­a­tion on it’s head.
Every Jamaican have the right to speak out about what con­tent is allowed to come out of the pub­lic air­waves vis a vis radio and tele­vi­sion.

It is exact­ly with­in the remit of the Member of Parliament to demand that the pub­lic air­waves be purged of this cor­rupt­ing filth which glo­ri­fy death, destruc­tion and the debase­ment of our women.

In the same breath it is exact­ly the right, and indeed the duty of the Honorable Prime Minister to speak out on all issues , moral and oth­er­wise, which he believes are hav­ing neg­a­tive con­se­quences on the nation.

This car­nal assault on our sen­si­bil­i­ties have con­tin­ued unabat­ed for too long . It has exist­ed and thrived, cocooned and pack­aged under the guise of music, while lead­ers cow­er in fear of the ungovern­able mass­es , allow­ing their unbri­dled , unhinged point of view to become pub­lic policy..
Leaders have every right to get involved to ensure that san­i­ty returns to our pub­lic air­waves and pub­lic spaces.
It is not just up to them to demand an end to the vis­cous assault being per­pet­u­at­ed on our psy­che but what are allowed to be played in the dance halls as well.

For too long many in the Jamaican com­mu­ni­ty believe that they should not be held to any standard.
The polit­i­cal class, hav­ing dirty hands them­selves, have ced­ed the moral high-ground , unable to speak out or take action to cur­tail the garbage bom­bard­ing our eardrums .

OPPORTUNITY FOR CONSENSUS ON WAY FORWARD…

Andrew Holness is the JLP Prime Minister , Lisa Hanna is the PNP’s mem­ber of Parliament. Both have felt the ire of the ungovern­able goons who have no respect for authority.
This ought to cause both lead­ers pause.
Both lead­ers are right , some­thing you will sel­dom hear me say about politicians.
Nevertheless this ought to be a wake up call for both polit­i­cal par­ties in ways that they have not been awak­ened before.

They should not allow the out­cry from a peo­ple who can­not dif­fer­en­ti­ate wrong from right to deter them from tak­ing action to bring san­i­ty to this issue and oth­ers affect­ing social order in the country.
No damn pris­on­er have any right to record music while they are incar­cer­at­ed , much less music which may be deemed offen­sive and unfit for airplay.

According to the Jamaica Constabulary Force’s own web­site their offi­cial staff num­ber is 9,930 plus 55 aux­il­iary posi­tions, mak­ing a total of 9,985; its cur­rent strength (as of 2011) is 8,441.
I am unsure how up to date that infor­ma­tion is as the site still has Dr.Carl Williams as it’s com­mis­sion­er on some pages.

Notwithstanding, that the numer­ic strength of the Jamaica Constabulary Force has increased expo­nen­tial­ly from the 80’s to ear­ly 90’s when I served.
This was made pos­si­ble because the JCF absorbed the 2000 or so mem­bers of the Island Constabulary Force (ISCF) it’s Auxiliary into the main force.
Despite the crit­i­cal need for more police offi­cers the JCF has been unable to grow above the num­bers it released, despite con­stant train­ing of new recruits.

Unusually high attri­tion num­bers have plagued the force for years. Even recent­ly trained offi­cers are con­stant­ly on the look out for green­er pas­ture. Many in the depart­ment are trapped in a life of semi-pover­ty they would ditch in an instant if the oppor­tu­ni­ty arose.

Homicides have increased from 152 in 1970 to 1680 in 2009. despite hav­ing added expo­nen­tial­ly to the numer­ic strength of the Force and upgrades in equip­ment and tools of the trade the Police con­tin­ue to argue that they do not have the ade­quate resources to do the job.
This despite increas­es in the depart­ments mobil­i­ty , com­put­ers , bal­lis­tic vests and mod­ern weapons and accou­ter­ments mur­ders and oth­er seri­ous crimes have seen a steady year by year increase.

One thing is cer­tain, is that the JCF has been ham­pered by a deficit of trust and sup­port even as it is ham­strung by lack of actu­al resource.
One of the larg­er issues which con­tin­ue to ham­per law enforce­ment is the con­tin­ued unproven crim­i­nal cod­dling notion that being tough on crime has not worked.
Secondly is the bold faced lie that being tough on crime is equiv­a­lent to being abu­sive of cit­i­zen’s rights.

There is no mutu­al exclu­siv­i­ty in the two inter­est areas.
Aggressive law enforce­ment done with a smile, “sor­ry to ask this of you but it’s for your safe­ty” goes a long way in calm­ing fears and get­ting peo­ple on your side.

There are no short­age of experts with graphs and a mouth­ful of argu­ments on this issue . This writer does not need their graphs and Monday Morning quarterbacking .
I lived it.
In 2005 there were 1674 homi­cides report­ed to police.
In 2006 there were 1340
In 2007 there were 1574
In 2008 there were 1601
In 2009 there were 1680
In 2010 there were 1428, this was before the Security Forces were unshack­led and allowed to go after Criminals in Tivoli Gardens.

Murders fell to 1125 in 2011 . This means that when com­pared to the most recent pre­ced­ing year of 2010, 303 Jamaicans were allowed to keep their lives.
Those are irrefutable facts.
Imagine if the Police are allowed to walk into each and every Garrison on this lit­tle Island of 2.8 mil­lion , PNP or JLP and do their jobs?
This drop off of over 20% in that one year speaks loud­er than the faux experts and self appoint­ed author­i­ties on crime in the country.
Simply put , putting a boot heel on the neck of Murderers , Rapists and oth­er seri­ous felons is the only way to get crime down.

It is high time that the fan­ci­ful smoke and mir­rors be dis­pensed with.
This stu­pid con­tention that we have tried the hard nosed approach has no rela­tion­ship with facts .
There was nev­er a time that the Jamaican Police were allowed to go into Garrisons and arrest dan­ger­ous crim­i­nals with­out far reach­ing con­se­quence to themselves.
The per­va­sive law­less­ness which per­vades the cul­ture is a result of polit­i­cal inter­fer­ence in law enforce­ment and politi­cians active­ly shield­ing known Murders , Rapists, and even Cop killers.

TIME NOW FOR A PROBATION DEPARTMENT.….

It may be time now for a pro­ba­tion depart­ment as this admin­is­tra­tion say it is focused on reduc­ing crime.
A pro­ba­tion Department will free up more police man hour to tack­le crime head on . It also pro­vides up to the minute infor­ma­tion on crim­i­nals and their movements.
Instead of report­ing to a Police sta­tion a paroled offend­er or an offend­er on pro­ba­tion reports direct­ly to a Probation office.
If he or she vio­lates the terms or their release from jail it is the duty of the Probation office/​officer to take that offender/​s back into custody.

A well designed Probation depart­ment eas­es much bur­den from the police allow­ing them to go after crim­i­nals . Any upgrade of the Criminal jus­tice sys­tem should also include the for­ma­tion of a Probation Department.
The Probation Department should be close­ly aligned with the Corrections depart­ment but must work with the JCF in a close and col­lab­o­ra­tive way as well.

LAY MAGISTRATES(JP’s)

If our coun­try is to be a place where peo­ple can feel com­fort­able to live and raise their fam­i­lies in safe­ty , secu­ri­ty and pros­per­i­ty, lead­ers must lead.
These pro­pos­als are not nov­el ideas,
These are ideas which have been co-opt­ed by many oth­er suc­cess­ful nations into their jus­tice systems.
It bog­gles the mind that the Administration can be talk­ing about increas­ing the num­bers of JP’s oth­er­wise called lay mag­is­trates, when the his­to­ry of the Lay Magistrate Program has been at best a huge con­trib­u­tor to crime and cor­rup­tion on the Island.

This pro­gram since it’s incep­tion has been pop­u­lat­ed with polit­i­cal hacks and crim­i­nal mind­ed hus­tlers from both polit­i­cal parties.
It has been an inte­gral part of the rot and cor­rup­tion which has char­ac­ter­ized our cul­ture since Independence.
It is high time that this cor­rupt­ing influ­ence be dis­con­tin­ued rather than broadened .

The idea that decisive crime fighting initiatives are synonymous with breaching Human Rights is a falsehood perpetuated by those who make a living from high crime rates and a constant state of confrontation between Police and citizens.

♦The Office of the Public Defender♦ The Independent Jamaica Council for Human Rights♦Jamaicans for Justice ♦Families against state Terrorism♦Peace Management Unit♦Amnesty International♦ Ministry of Justice ♦Attorney Generals Office ♦Etc.…..Etc.…Etc.….

These are just of few of the Agencies and Government Departments oper­at­ing in Jamaica sup­pos­ed­ly look­ing out for the inter­est and Human Rights of Jamaicans.
These bod­ies are sin­gu­lar­ly focused on the rights of those who say they have been aggriev­ed by agents of the state.

WHO LOOK OUT FOR THE INTEREST OF VICTIMS?

I may be wrong, as such I wel­come feed­back which will edu­cate me about exist­ing NGO’s in place which is geared at help­ing vic­tims of crime.
I have no quar­rel with gen­uine efforts to help peo­ple who have been vic­tim­ized by the Government or its agents.
For years the actions of both polit­i­cal par­ties on the Jamaican peo­ple have been trau­mat­ic and wor­thy of redress.
God knows all of us aver­age peo­ple need all of the help we can get when seek­ing redress from pow­er­ful Governments and their Agents.

We can­not ignore the fact that there has been no effort, at least that I have seen, insti­tut­ed to aid vic­tims of crime.
I believe fun­da­men­tal­ly that aid­ing those who through no fault of their own, have been vic­tim­ized by crime, is a far more noble cause than fight­ing to ensure that killers are treat­ed with care, as stip­u­lat­ed by des­ig­nat­ed Internationally based Liberal Agencies.

We await with gen­uine inter­est the new set of crime fight­ing ini­tia­tives to be announced by the Prime Minister.
Nevertheless, we remain deeply skep­ti­cal that any­thing announced will have any sub­stan­tive pos­i­tive result unless the police are unshack­led and empow­ered to go after crim­i­nals wher­ev­er they are.

There are more than enough process­es in place to ensure that police offi­cer who acts out­side the bounds of the laws are prosecuted.
I actu­al­ly believe that the degree to which the police is shack­led is a dri­ving force in the rapid growth and vicious­ness of the crimes being com­mit­ted on the most vulnerable.
It’s full time that this Administration sends a strong mes­sage to crim­i­nals that their actions will not be tolerated.
Anything else will sim­ply be a capit­u­la­tion to the vis­cous mur­der­ers who con­tin­ue to take inno­cent lives with impunity.

This is what Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas Director at Amnesty International, had to say about our coun­try awhile back.
“Police shoot­ings are gen­er­al­ly attrib­uted to a “tough on crime” approach, but often dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly tar­get poor com­mu­ni­ties where vic­tims have lit­tle recourse.”
In the very same state­ment, Amnesty said this. “Jamaica has one of the world’s high­est mur­der rates and is rife with gang vio­lence.”

Amnesty International and oth­er Groups which take on the role of advo­cat­ing for human rights are able to research and report on what they see around the Globe.
Neither of these Internationally based Agencies has any impact on leg­is­la­tion out­side the broad­er frame­work of the Geneva Conventions and oth­er Treaties in the west­ern nations, Agency, even in which they are based or from which they emanate.

Jamaica should not allow Amnesty International or anAgency, or any Treaty to pre­vent it from doing what is it’s core function.
That is pro­vid­ing secu­ri­ty in the Jamaican state.
The fact that an International Human Rights Agency can ver­bal­ize the fact that(1) Jamaica has one of the high­est crime rate in the world and is rife with gang violence.

Then (2) argue that the very same vio­lent gang affil­i­at­ed young men” have lit­tle recourse to their lives of vio­lent crimes” when tar­get­ed by police crackdown.
This state­ments have vin­di­cat­ed my argu­ments that these agen­cies do not care about crime. Neither do they care about crime victims.
Obviously what they care about is main­tain­ing pres­sure on poor nations so that they are forced to hands off vio­lent crime, effec­tive­ly keep­ing their economies strug­gling and depen­dent on their larg­er more pow­er­ful patrons.

It is impor­tant to under­stand that these Agencies are based in the United States and Great Britain.
Having lived in the United States for over 25 year I am hard pressed to see a sit­u­a­tion in which Amnesty International , the Inter American Commission for Human Rights, or any oth­er Agency have once placed them­selves in the fight African-Americans have with unlaw­ful police killing of unarmed black men.

They have no pow­er in America, they should have no pow­er to dic­tate laws in Jamaica . Their advo­ca­cy in to ensure the con­tin­ued finan­cial depen­den­cy on the larg­er patron states , ie the United States, England etal.
It is a part of the world order which is geared at keep­ing small­er states with peo­ple of col­or finan­cial­ly dependent.
They can only guar­an­tee failed economies in crime rid­den soci­eties. Failed economies mean per­pet­u­al depen­den­cy on larg­er pow­er­ful states for loans.
These loans are attached to strin­gent aus­ter­i­ty mea­sures which in turn fur­ther impov­er­ish­es debtor states.
And the cycle continues.

The poor­est Nations with the high­est inci­dents of crime have the most vocal, most pow­er­ful Human Rights advocacy.
Nations which take their own futures in their own hands by dis­card­ing the views of these agen­cies have done very well for them­selves and in many cas­es are eco­nom­ic mod­els for the rest of the world.
The ques­tion is, when will Jamaicans real­ize that the very peo­ple sup­pos­ed­ly look­ing out for their well-being are the peo­ple keep­ing them in poverty.

The ever nagging question of crime continues to dominate the news in Jamaica, even as it remains topical in conversations across social Media.
In recent times the Jamaican Prime Minister was forced to address this serious issue because of the much-heightened instances of women and teenage girls being abducted, raped and murdered.

BAND AID ON GUNSHOT WOUND APPROACH.

Among the tiny pin-prick ini­tia­tives announced by Prime Minister Andrew Holness are (1) the use of pre­ven­ta­tive deten­tions of poten­tial offend­ers among mea­sures to help to con­tain crime.( I believe this has to do with domes­tic situations).
(2) That tints should be removed from all pub­lic pas­sen­ger vehi­cles. (This will be a process which in some cas­es will take up to a year for all to be brought into full compliance).

In addi­tion to the ini­ti­ates announced recent­ly, the Prime Minister announced just yes­ter­day that addi­tion­al anti-crime mea­sures are coming.
Without being too much of a smart ass, announcements.I dare­say that the mur­der­ers must be quak­ing in their announcements.

This admin­is­tra­tion, the one it suc­ceed­ed, like oth­ers before dat­ing back to 1962, have played fast and loose with the Jamaican peo­ple on the issue of their secu­ri­ty and more so in mak­ing the island a nation of laws.
To solid­i­fy their holds on the pow­er, they have used scarce pub­lic funds to cre­ate zones of polit­i­cal exclu­sions with the sole intent of keep­ing them­selves in authority.
This process has ren­dered our elec­tions in many cas­es opti­cal exer­cis­es with the out­comes hav­ing no rela­tion­ship with what hap­pened in reality.

These zones of polit­i­cal exclu­sions (gar­risons) have become breed­ing grounds for crime and a sig­nif­i­cant pow­er base against the rule of law.
The shock­ing mur­der sta­tis­tics must be viewed with angst and shock, but what’s even more fright­en­ing is the refusal by so many with­in the soci­ety to be gov­erned by the rule of law.
This law­less­ness occurred as a result of the inter­min­gling of politi­cians in crim­i­nal con­duct while tying the hands of law enforcement.

Throwing inad­e­quate­ly trained, poor­ly equipped, poor­ly sup­port­ed and com­pen­sat­ed police offi­cers into this bub­bling caul­dron of anar­chy does noth­ing to ame­lio­rate crime.
It places the lives of offi­cers in seri­ous jeop­ardy while cre­at­ing a false impres­sion that some­thing mean­ing­ful is being done.
Again, pan­der­ing to the opti­cal with­out doing any­thing worth­while and lasting.

Fixing crime requires new leg­is­la­tion which puts mur­der­ers in prison and keep­ing them there. It requires pro­vid­ing jobs so that young peo­ple can have alter­na­tive options to lives of crime. It requires a change in the Bail Act which pre­vents judges from giv­ing bail to peo­ple accused of mur­der. It requires fix­ing the crim­i­nal jus­tice system.
It requires throw­ing out the train­ing man­u­al of the police acad­e­my and putting in its place a train­ing pro­gram which reflects the tasks and dan­gers offi­cers face on the job today.

NEW COMMISSIONER OF POLICE…?

There is so much that has to be done, that is not being done.
If recent media reports are any­thing to go by, Police. Deputy Commissioner of Police Novelette Grant will be tapped to be the next CommissiPolice. According to the Jamaicadailygleaner​.com The Police Service Commission is poised to announce that Acting Police Commissioner Novelette Grant has been select­ed to lead the Force. That announce­ment is expect­ed short­ly. “Ms. Grant was appoint­ed to act in the post, but it appears that it was a test run and she has passed with fly­ing colors.”

Novelette Grant is supreme­ly qualified.
Supremely skilled was a char­ac­ter­i­za­tion used to describe her pre­de­ces­sor (assum­ing that reports of her appoint­ment are true).
The dif­fer­ence with Novelette Grant in my esti­ma­tion is that she is not only book smart, but she is also ful­ly in tune with the day to day chal­lenges offi­cers on the streets face.
She has head­ed the tight police Area 5 which com­pris­es St Thomas, St Catherine, and St Andrew North.
But beyond that, she is one of only a tiny group of senior police offi­cials with­in the JCF who believe they are police officers.
Novelette Grant should gar­ner much sup­port from the men and women under her com­mand. She is total­ly deserv­ing of this oppor­tu­ni­ty to lead the JCF.
Not because she is a woman, the nation can ill afford to have a quo­ta dri­ven approach to policing.
She deserves the job because she has earned the oppor­tu­ni­ty to lead.

Regardless of the wealth of knowl­edge and skills Novelette Grant brings to the table, it will be all for noth­ing if she is not giv­en strong leg­isla­tive backing.
Her efforts will be thwart­ed, ren­der­ing her tal­ent and skills redun­dant as that of so many oth­ers have been before her.
That can change if polit­i­cal lead­ers put the inter­est of the coun­try over their own and make the hard deci­sions which once and for all demon­strate to those inclined that they will not be able to break laws with impunity.

The Government will have to tell those who make a liv­ing from human rights advo­ca­cy that they are appre­ci­at­ed, but they should to sit down and shut up.
Placing a ban­dage on a gun­shot wound with­out remov­ing the war­head and fix­ing the dam­age it did, is a death sen­tence for the victim.
So too is the present approach to crime.
The Nation is dying a slow but sure death, even as it’s lead­ers insti­tute incon­se­quen­tial and mean­ing­less fixes.

There is a raft of rea­sons behind the law­less­ness and chaos which seem to char­ac­ter­ize every­thing in Jamaica , not the least of which is the pro­cliv­i­ty of politi­cians to demand actions from sec­tors of the coun­try with­out hav­ing first cod­i­fied those demands in law.

The lat­est exam­ple of this is the demand the Minister of National Security made that all pub­lic pas­sen­ger vehi­cles with tints remove said tints.
The demand came amidst mount­ing alle­ga­tions that women and young girls who end up being raped and mur­dered are being picked up in dark­ly tint­ed taxi cabs.

I have no data which would sug­gest that the Minister has any infor­ma­tion which would sug­gest that if there were no tints on these pub­lic pas­sen­ger vehi­cles women and girls would be bet­ter protected.
Even if true, the Minister has not indi­cat­ed why it is nec­es­sary to have a blan­ket pol­i­cy man­dat­ing that all pub­lic pas­sen­ger vehi­cles remove their tints, to include JUTC buses.

The Jamaica Urban Transit Company (JUTC) a Government enti­ty announced it will com­ply with the direc­tive from the Government, even though the cost asso­ci­at­ed with the removal will be astronomical.
Reginald Allen, mar­ket­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er at the JUTC, said while the removal of tints was a dif­fi­cult exer­cise, the state-owned com­pa­ny was com­mit­ted to being com­pli­ant. “It is very, very dif­fi­cult, but we are look­ing at a few mea­sures over time, includ­ing spe­cial secu­ri­ty arrange­ments for those bus­es [that will take time to get reg­u­larised],” Allen told The Gleaner.

Among the chal­lenges the (JUTC) faces oth­er than costs is the place­ment of adver­tise­ment on it’s bus­es. Not being allowed to place ads on bus win­dows arguably could result in a loss of rev­enue for the strug­gling (JUTC).
Allen not­ed that the JUTC has been grant­ed a peri­od of 12 months to adjust to the new mea­sures which the Government is con­vinced will help to quell the fears of many result­ing from reports of the kid­nap­ping and killing of women and chil­dren in recent times.

There are sig­nif­i­cant costs asso­ci­at­ed with this tint removal process as well as logis­ti­cal issues. But there would be a sig­nif­i­cant prob­lem if the Government’s own enti­ty was not com­ply­ing with it’s own directive.
The (JUTC ) has been giv­en up to a year to remove tints from it’s fleet of bus­es, fair enough right.
Right !”
That“s only fair con­sid­er­ing that the (JUTC) has a fleet of more than 400 buses.
On the oth­er hand the Police are active­ly seiz­ing pri­vate bus­es and Taxi’s which have not com­plied with the direc­tive. We can agree that it does not require a full year to remove tints from a sin­gle pas­sen­ger vehi­cle ‚but the Government should give oper­a­tors at least a month before tak­ing their plates.

THEN COMES THE “C” WORD…

Much cha­grined, the Jamaica Association of Transport Owners and Operators (JATOO) has asked the police for a sus­pen­sion in the removal of tints from pub­lic pas­sen­ger motor vehi­cles (PPV).
According to (JATOO).
“We are unable to rep­re­sent any mem­ber on this issue before a deci­sion is made regard­ing tints,” it added.”We are also advis­ing the trav­el­ling pub­lic that if you can­not see inside of a vehi­cle, you should not enter into that vehicle.”
The Association has been invit­ed to a meet­ing next Monday at Jamaica House to dis­cuss the issue.

With all of that said, many in (JATOO) are actu­al­ly say­ing that this direc­tive is .…. wait for it.……is not.… ( constitutional).
Ha „ this was bound to happen .
When you think about it , enforc­ing the nation’s laws is a huge challenge .
How do you enforce a direc­tive when it is not cod­i­fied in law?

On the face of it this is a huge endeav­or which is not a law. There is no data which would indi­cate that remov­ing tints will have a sig­nif­i­cant, or even a neg­li­gi­ble effect on crime.
Tint pol­i­cy is not an out of this realm require­ment. If you live in many states of the United States pub­lic pas­sen­gers vehi­cles are not allowed to have dark tint.
In fact even pri­vate motor vehi­cles are barred from hav­ing dark tint.
Other coun­tries have the same pol­i­cy, the dif­fer­ence being that in each and every case laws are passed before the direc­tives are made. http://​www​.the​hin​du​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​c​i​t​i​e​s​/​b​a​n​g​a​l​o​r​e​/​s​u​n​-​f​i​l​m​-​w​i​t​h​-​e​x​t​r​a​-​t​i​n​t​-​s​h​o​u​l​d​-​b​e​-​r​e​m​o​v​e​d​-​f​r​o​m​-​c​a​r​s​-​b​e​f​o​r​e​-​m​a​y​-​1​9​/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​3​3​9​3​1​7​2​.​ece

That’s a step above what the Jamaican author­i­ties are asking.
The prob­lem with Jamaican author­i­ties is that they ask peo­ple to do things instead of pass­ing laws which cit­i­zens are man­dat­ed to follow.

There is an old Jamaican proverb which goes like this .
“King nu have nu hana inna im own kuntry”.
Translation : People with ideas and much more to offer are usu­al­ly not rec­og­nized by their own country .
Generally, the very ideas that locals espouse and prof­fer are nev­er giv­en the time of day .
Nevertheless ‚when oth­ers from out­side say the very same things or offer the very same ideas ‚they are imme­di­ate­ly adopt­ed, or at the very least their point of views are ele­vat­ed and considered.

As a Jamaican patri­ot who care deeply about the state of our coun­try I could­n’t care less about who said what , when.
I care that sol­id ideas regard­less of their source , are con­sid­ered and adopt­ed, with a view to plac­ing our coun­try on a foot­ing of peace and secu­ri­ty . So that pros­per­i­ty can become a real­i­ty for all Jamaicans and not mere­ly a slogan.

JAMAICA GLEANER REPORTING...

With Jamaica strug­gling to cope with one of the high­est mur­der rates in the world, a secu­ri­ty offi­cer based at the Japanese Embassy in Kingston has out­lined a host of mea­sures the coun­try could imple­ment to help reduce gun crimes.

He told The Gleaner that Japan man­aged to get a grip on gun crimes by work­ing with res­i­dents to rid com­mu­ni­ties of gang­sters, along with impos­ing strict gun laws over dif­fer­ent periods.

“The soci­ety has to repel the gang­sters. In Japan, many hot springs (bathing facil­i­ties) refuse for the gang mem­bers to enter their facil­i­ties, or on the golf course; you shut them out (from every­thing)! That is very dif­fi­cult, but the police also help them to keep away the gang­sters,” said the offi­cial, who was autho­rised to speak, but request­ed anonymi­ty for secu­ri­ty purposes.

“Punishment under the gun con­trol act got more severe day by day. If you fire a gun in a pub­lic place, the pun­ish­ment will (almost inevitably) be three years and up to life in prison. If you pos­sess a gun and ammu­ni­tion at the same time, the pun­ish­ment will be three years or more. If you pos­sess a gun for organ­ised crime, the impris­on­ment is five years or more, and you get a fine as well, which is 30 mil­lion yen, close to J$30 million.”

VERY RARE

Japan cur­rent­ly has 22 offi­cial­ly recog­nised crim­i­nal organ­i­sa­tions, with the Yakuza gang being the largest and most sophis­ti­cat­ed. However, cas­es involv­ing the fir­ing of guns are very rare.

In 2015, only eight shoot­ings occurred. This is dras­ti­cal­ly low when com­pared with the destruc­tion that could have been caused by the more than 380 ille­gal guns con­fis­cat­ed by the police for the same period.

Those impres­sive records, the offi­cial said, were as a result of high-qual­i­ty intel­li­gence gath­er­ing, achieved by main­tain­ing close rela­tion­ships with com­mu­ni­ties, as well as pro­vid­ing trust­wor­thy and effec­tive policing.

“Our intel­li­gence gath­er­ing is effec­tive because the Yakuza gang­sters them­selves say it is very dif­fi­cult to car­ry out their job. If they com­mit a crime in the name of the gang, they are severe­ly pun­ished, so it is very dif­fi­cult for them to man­age their busi­ness,” he point­ed out.
http://​jamaica​-glean​er​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​l​e​a​d​-​s​t​o​r​i​e​s​/​2​0​1​7​0​2​1​4​/​r​e​p​e​l​-​g​a​n​g​s​t​e​r​s​-​j​a​m​a​i​c​a​-​n​e​e​d​s​-​s​t​r​i​c​t​-​g​u​n​-​l​a​w​s​-​r​e​d​u​c​e​-​c​r​i​m​e​-​s​ays

A Kingston Judge this morn­ing ruled that dance hall DJ Earlan Bartley o/​c Alkaline either be charged with a crime by the police or be released by 6.00 pm today.

The police asked the DJ to turn him­self in as part of their inves­ti­ga­tions of the mur­der of Rohan Morris in Maverley on January 13.
Bartley, has been in cus­tody since Thursday when he report­ed to the Area Four Headquarters at Harman Barracks in Vineyard Town, accom­pa­nied by his lawyer Peter Champagnie.

No one can fault the judge for respond­ing that way in response to the writ of habeas cor­pus Champanie filed on his behalf.
If I was in lock­up with­out charge I would absolute­ly be livid.

It is impor­tant to note that as part of an inves­ti­ga­tion the police can ask a mem­ber of the pub­lic to come in for an interview.
In cas­es where this is nec­es­sary the police should always be polite in request­ing that the per­son come in, even if they have sub­stan­tive evi­dence that would neces­si­tate a charge.

There is noth­ing wrong about ask­ing some­one to come in for an inter­view , even if there is no evi­dence to charge. Interviewing a wide range of per­sons is quite nor­mal in order to get to the truth.

If there is no evi­dence to charge the indi­vid­ual after that ini­tial inter­view, then the thing to do is to allow the per­son to go with a thank you for com­ing in.
This is true even if there is sub­stan­tial evi­dence that (1) the per­son is lying or (2) the per­son is involved in the crime.
Allowing the per­son to go is the right thing to do until enough evi­dence is gath­ered, unless there is a seri­ous flight risk involved .
If there is a flight risk , then any good detec­tive, with­in the bound­aries of the law, knows the ins and outs of find­ing ways to ensure that the per­son is not allowed to flee

My ques­tion for the police is this.
“If you ask some­one to come in and you do an inter­view and do not have evi­dence to charge, why keep the per­son in custody”?
As it was twen­ty five years ago the police con­tin­ue to make the same mis­takes today.
That is a lack of super­vi­sion, it is also a lack of com­mon sense.

Separate and apart from the judge’s rul­ing on the habeas cor­pus application .
The police have got to be more proac­tive in deal­ing with crim­i­nal investigations.
The Judges are extreme­ly hos­tile to the pros­e­cu­tors in Jamaica, they know that. If they don’t then they are even more sim­ple-mind­ed than many peo­ple believe.

The mere involve­ment of cer­tain lawyers in a case ought to tell police how that offend­er will be han­dled with kid gloves by judges , regard­less of the alle­ga­tions against them. Peter Champagnie is one such lawyer.
No one need remind the police that many of the judges are in league with the crim­i­nal defense lawyers and are active­ly engaged in releas­ing mur­der­ers and oth­er seri­ous felons back onto the streets for a vari­ety of rea­sons includ­ing mon­e­tary reasons.

It is impor­tant that the police stop com­mit­ting these unforced errors which only serves to embold­en crim­i­nals, while reduc­ing their ow credibility.
Do your job right.

Prime Minister Andrew Holness at a press con­fer­ence ear­li­er this week announced a raft of ini­tia­tives in rela­tion to the Island’s high mur­der rate.
One of the nar­ra­tives from the talk­ing heads as a result of that press con­fer­ence is that once every­one have jobs mur­der will dissipate.

In order to accept that the­sis, one has by default,accepted that because one is poor he is auto­mat­i­cal­ly reduced to being a murderer.
I have repeat­ed­ly show in this medi­um that that is patent­ly false.
As I have con­clud­ed each time after lay­ing out dis­sent­ing facts , there are many coun­tries across Latin and South America, Africa and Asia which are demon­stra­bly poor­er than Jamaica yet they are not sad­dled with the civ­il war style homi­cide rates of Jamaica.
On that basis alone that the­o­ry is debunked.

That is not to say that some cat­e­go­ry of crimes are not direct­ly attrib­ut­able to bad socio-eco­nom­ic conditions.
It is fair to say that pet­ty thefts to include pre­di­al lar­ce­ny, and even cor­rup­tion in Government Agencies may be laid at the feet of poverty.
I am yet to see a sin­gle bit of evi­dence which proves that bru­tal rapes and mur­ders are actions attrib­ut­able to low­er soci-eco­nom­ic status.

In fact Jamaican law-enforce­ment and Governmental offi­cials , of both par­ties, have repeat­ed­ly said that the vast major­i­ty of homi­cides are being com­mit­ted by peo­ple engaged in the illic­it Lotto-scam, Gangs, and the major­i­ty of the oth­ers are domes­tic homicides.
These are facts not hyper­bole or wild assumptions.

I would hope that the Prime Minister’s ini­tia­tives on Domestic abuse cas­es which result in vio­lence are not con­fused with evi­dence which points to more seri­ous Gang and scam relat­ed homicides.
Now that we have estab­lished fac­tu­al­ly that rapes and mur­ders have noth­ing to do with pover­ty ‚we may begin the process of dis­sect­ing the rape and mur­der sta­tis­tics with a view to see­ing what solu­tions can be applied to those problems.
HORSE BEFORE THE CART… 

The idea that fix­ing the econ­o­my means crime goes away is incred­i­bly ridicu­lous. To begin with , the two com­pet­ing inter­ests are not mutu­al­ly exclu­sive. The econ­o­my can be made whole ‚while crime is appro­pri­ate­ly addressed simultaneously.
However ‚if the Administration is inca­pable of walk­ing and chew­ing gun at the same time , it is impor­tant that they at least real­ize that the econ­o­my can­not be fixed in a state of unde­clared civ­il war.
But that even under the most press­ing eco­nom­ic con­di­tions, crime may, and must, be brought under control.

I have laid out in this medi­um, spe­cif­ic ini­tia­tives which if adopt­ed, tak­ing into con­sid­er­a­tion the finan­cial lim­i­ta­tions of the Island and the Police Department will see a sig­nif­i­cant drop in crime.
I will once again out­line some of those ini­tia­tives which the JCF are free to copy. I am more than will­ing to assist the agency with specifics were they to ask.

FOR THE POLICE

♦ Begin a more rig­or­ous and com­pre­hen­sive vet­ting of Police recruits.
♦ Train Police using proven mod­els in devel­oped coun­tries which are intel­li­gence based.
♦ Retrain every cop at every lev­el using the mod­el adopted.
♦ Remove the accel­er­at­ed ranks from behind desks, place them on the streets wher­ev­er need­ed out­side those need­ed for inside duties.
♦ Put in place mech­a­nisms at all lev­els of the Department based on estab­lished mea­sur­able stan­dards of account­abil­i­ty and productivity.
♦ Place empha­sis on the Investigative capa­bil­i­ties of the Department .Ie, encour­ag­ing and reward­ing qual­i­fied , moti­vat­ed indi­vid­u­als who want to serve in crim­i­nal investigations.
♦ Develop and main­tain close ties with communities.
♦ Incentivize hard work.
♦ Re-estab­lish Esprit de Corp.
♦ Establish sup­port struc­ture for offi­cers caught up in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem until it has been estab­lished defin­i­tive­ly that offi­cers act­ed out­side the laws.
♦ Place police offi­cers in groups of two’s strate­gi­cal­ly on foot and in cars in all major cities and towns dur­ing daytime.
♦ At nights place police offi­cers strate­gi­cal­ly in loca­tions in cars . Officers do not have to be patrolling at all times. This will cut down on the use of fuel.
♦ Effectively mon­i­tor the Nations high­ways with a view to cut down on crim­i­nal migration.

FOR THE GOVERNMENT AND OPPOSITION..

♦Repeal the INDECOM Act. Re debate the law tak­ing into con­sid­er­a­tion the pros and cons of the point of view of all inter­est­ed par­ties. Then re-autho­rize it with addi­tion­al inves­tiga­tive pow­ers to assist the police adding anoth­er com­po­nent of inves­tiga­tive capa­bil­i­ty free from polit­i­cal interference.
♦Provide the police with the resources they need to do their job.
♦ Hands off law-enforcement.
♦ Disassociate each polit­i­cal par­ty from crim­i­nals and crim­i­nal con­duct , Remove even the specter of any such associations.
♦ Prevent guns from flood­ing the Island.
♦ Draft leg­is­la­tion which guar­an­tee truth in sentencing.
♦ Mandatory life Imprisonment for rape and murder .
♦ Remove from the hands of Judges the option to pass sen­tence for cas­es of mur­der, rape, extor­tion and racketeering.
♦ Do not hire any Judges who were for­mer defense lawyers for ten years.
♦ Abolish the pub­lic defend­er’s office . Use resources to update and main­tain the Director of Public Prosecution’s office. The coun­try has a Justice Ministry and an Attorney Generals Department, which must han­dle com­plaints from the public.
♦ Eradicate cor­rup­tion from pub­lic agen­cies through vig­i­lance, and super­vi­sion as well as oth­er meth­ods used in dif­fer­ent coun­tries à la-the U S immi­gra­tion service.
♦ Launch a civics cam­paign to teach stu­dents from grade school through high school National pride and civic mindedness.
♦ Throw out out­dat­ed laws . Re do them with more severe penal­ties for breach­es of the penal code.
♦ Encourage pri­vate sec­tor job growth.
These bul­let points are cer­tain­ly not com­pre­hen­sive by any stretch of the imagination.
However I believe a road-map which includes the whole or any sub­stan­tive part of these bul­let points will begin to show a marked reduc­tion in the lev­els of vio­lent crimes on the Island.

Read , like share.

Disgustingly , yet not sur­pris­ing­ly ‚with the wave of abduc­tions, rapes, and killing of women and young girls across the Island, the People’s National Party is focused on what they sole­ly care about, acquir­ing state power.

While many Jamaicans are focused on the threat to women and girls , which is in addi­tion to the astro­nom­i­cal­ly high crime rate, the PNP have noth­ing to offer . Neither in the way of a com­mu­niqué in sup­port of the Jamaican peo­ple , nor a word of sup­port for the exis­ten­tial fight the coun­try finds itself in against the nation’s criminals.
The PNP is large­ly respon­si­ble for the state in which the coun­try finds itself.
After 14 ¹⁄₂ unbro­ken years of Michael Manley , PJ Patterson and Portia Simpson Miller it was any­thing was any­thing on crime.
Now the same group of dirty thiev­ing old bas­tards are once again lin­ing up, hop­ing to once again be allowed to do more harm.
They were busi­ly engaged in the sick­en­ing­ly rapa­cious process of posi­tion­ing them­selves in the quest for state power.

On the oth­er hand ‚Andrew Holness the Island’s Prime Minister held a press con­fer­ence flanked by his nation­al secu­ri­ty team. Holness declared that the time for talk­ing is over.
The Attorney General Marlene Malahoo Forte fear­ful of back­lash from crim­i­nal rights , the bar asso­ci­a­tion, the oppo­si­tion par­ty and the vil­lage lawyers said quote.

“I under­stand that many peo­ple are going to jump up and start talk­ing about what is and what isn’t … . We have tak­en the time to ensure that what we are doing fits with­in our legal and con­sti­tu­tion­al framework.”
“Be at ease. It does­n’t mat­ter how tough any mea­sure that is announced sounds. We are ensur­ing that those mea­sures com­ply with the Constitution and the laws of Jamaica.” 

The fact that Malahoo Forte had to delve into that lev­el of pre­emp­tive insu­la­tion, speaks to the lev­el of sup­port crim­i­nals have in the country.
Nevertheless I am a tad per­plexed at the Prime Minister and his team.
On the one hand the PM said the mea­sures were not a knee-jerk reac­tion to the spate of domes­tics killings in recent weeks, but are ini­tia­tives that have been under con­sid­er­a­tion for some time.
While simul­ta­ne­ous­ly admit­ting that by virtue of what has hap­pened over the past few weeks, we feel that this is the right time to bring this to the public.
Oh well , whatever .….

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​2​3​6​864 – 2/
What took the Prime Minister so long to real­ize that the coun­try is in trouble?
From her words and deeds his wife, fresh­man Member of par­lia­ment Juliette cer­tain­ly gets it.
Did the Prime Minister actu­al­ly naive­ly believe that his stat­ed goal of bring­ing pros­per­i­ty to the coun­try was going to hap­pen amidst the carnage?

Surely the PM must have known, must have had the most basic of under­stand­ing that sole­ly on the face of it crime robs the coun­try of hun­dreds of mil­lions of US dol­lars each year right off the bat.
This comes in the form of loss of invest­ments and tourism dol­lars which would have been pour­ing into the coun­try were gov­ern­ment able to root out crime by adopt­ing seri­ous anti crime measures.

Clearly the Prime Minister must have the most basic under­stand­ing , or must have read it some­place that crime thrives when Governments lack the spinal for­ti­tude to effec­tive­ly place a boot heel on its neck.
Surely the PM must have know that crim­i­nals watch to see what the gov­ern­ment will allow .
Seriously, what are the talk­ing heads going to do if you fuck­ing repeal the INDECOM act ‚redo it then re autho­rize it?
What are they going to do if the gov­ern­ment send the police out to get the killers and bring them to jus­tice or bring jus­tice to them (their choice)?

You know what, that’s called lead­er­ship, the shit­heads who sit and pon­tif­i­cate about human rights are not bury­ing any dead chil­dren or oth­er loved ones.
These ass­holes are not being mur­dered, their lit­tle girls are not being raped and mutilated.
Its about time that these peo­ple are told to shut the fuck up and if they don’t they should be made to shut the fuck up, (their choice).

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​t​h​e​-​s​i​l​e​n​t​-​m​a​j​o​r​i​t​y​-​w​a​n​t​s​-​a​n​-​e​n​d​-​t​o​-​c​r​i​m​e​-​t​h​e​-​e​l​i​t​e​s​-​i​n​-​k​i​n​g​s​t​o​n​-​a​r​e​-​f​u​e​l​i​n​g​-​t​h​e​-​c​r​i​m​e​-​w​a​ve/

This is a slid­ing scale of what will hap­pen in our country.
The gov­ern­ment is doing a lot of talk­ing and not much else. This prob­lem in our coun­try will not be fixed with plat­i­tudes and niceties.
It will be fixed with real tough actions which aver­age Jamaican are yearn­ing for.
As I have said before the peo­ple them­selves will say when enough is enough.
They are say­ing so now . Missing this oppor­tu­ni­ty to act deci­sive­ly to work on behalf of the peo­ple is a gross abdi­ca­tion of the gov­ern­ments responsibility.
Failing to deci­sive­ly bend this arc is a fail­ure of the admin­is­tra­tion to ful­fill it’s most basic func­tion , which is to pro­tect the people.

Though not a lawyer, having read the INDECOM Act on its roll-out ‚I concluded that this law would (1) Increase crime.(2) Embolden criminals.
(3)Dramatically erode the morale of the men and women of the Police Department, among other things.
My opposition is a matter of public record.

Set aside my well know sense of revul­sion for the head of INDECOM, a right, and just piece of leg­is­la­tion, well thought out, and enact­ed, would have put cor­rupt cops on notice that betray­al of their sacred oaths would not be tol­er­at­ed. Additionally it would be a truth-sur­ro­gate for law­ful police actions.
I have spo­ken to many police offi­cers, past and present, hard­ly any­one with whom I have talked to has had any oppo­si­tion to oversight.
So the straw-man argu­ments that, (1) Police offi­cers want to oper­ate out­side the bounds of the laws, and, (2) That they are opposed to over­sight are sim­ply not correct.

At the time the law was enact­ed, then Prime Minister Bruce Golding had this to say.
“We will sup­port you, but we will hold you account­able,” about the Police Department.
I am not sure whether any Police offi­cer real­ized or ben­e­fit­ed from that sup­port Golding had offered before he was forced to step aside.
What I do know is that the entire Police Force, Military, and Corrections have been bit­ten by the lov­ing hands of Bruce Golding’s largess[sic]
Hundreds of peo­ple have died unnec­es­sar­i­ly as a result of this gift he so will­ing­ly forced on our country.
The crim­i­nal under­world could not ask for a bet­ter gift.

What we do know is that a bill was cob­bled togeth­er and passed which (1) vio­lates the con­sti­tu­tion­al rights of offi­cers by forc­ing them to prompt­ly give writ­ten affi­davits of their actions even after the most trau­mat­ic encounters.
Anyone con­ver­sant with most life and death sit­u­a­tions in which police law­ful­ly use lethal force, know that the offi­cer or offi­cers involved are gen­er­al­ly severe­ly traumatized.

I under­stand that all too well, hav­ing being shot at point blank range in the dark­ened zinc fenced alley known as Blackwood Terrace in the Kingston 8 area. When you are forced to use force to save your own life you need time to recoup your thoughts.
That is the rea­son Police depart­ments across the west­ern world do not force their offi­cers to give writ­ten affi­davits until they have had a chance to recov­er from the trau­ma of their ordeal, with­ing a rea­son­able time of course.

No one can be forced to give a writ­ten state­ment accord­ing to the Jamaican Constitution.
However, agents of the state were cor­rect­ly required to give writ­ten accounts of their actions with­ing a rea­son­able time, of course, this was before the INDECOM Act which Golding gave the nation and the Police.
Forcing them to give state­ments imme­di­ate­ly after fac­ing death up close is uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. The Act was designed explic­it­ly to snare police offi­cers rather than arrive at the truth.

The entire­ty of the INDECOM Act is puni­tive and destruc­tive to law enforce­ment and the nation . Bruce Golding must have known that this was a bad law. He is not a lawyer but the then Prime Minister had at his dis­pos­al lawyers with­in his cab­i­net and a slew of oth­er attor­neys, includ­ing his then Attorney General and Justice Minister.
That a law was draft­ed which con­tained such destruc­tive ele­ments to law enforce­ment can­not be viewed as an error . It must be seen for what it is a cyn­i­cal, yet direct assault on law enforcement.

Forcing Law enforce­ment to give state­ments up front is only one of the many prob­lems which sup­port my con­tin­ued argu­ment that the law is bad.
Having cre­at­ed a firestorm of dis­sent with­ing the Constabulary, INDECOM was forced to acknowl­edge that there need be a mem­o­ran­dum of under­stand­ing between the two agen­cies. That alone is proof that the law is not only imper­fect it is fun­da­men­tal­ly flawed.
Using bul­ly tac­tics the head of INDECOM has picked fights with the Director of Public Prosecution, the JCF, the Military and Corrections Department.

Having acri­mo­nious rela­tion­ships with agen­cies INDECOM is tasked with inves­ti­gat­ing does not enhance the inves­tiga­tive capac­i­ty of INDECOM it com­pli­cates them.
No ill which may cred­i­bly be laid at the feet of INDECOM is more con­se­quen­tial than the chill­ing effect it has had on the abil­i­ty of police and the mil­i­tary to do their jobs with­out the very real specter of prison and finan­cial ruin hang­ing over them for well.….…. doing their jobs.
This had led to a dra­mat­ic rise in the num­ber of seri­ous crimes to include Murders, rapes, abduc­tions et al.
The evi­dence that crim­i­nals are more embold­ened is lost only on the con­ve­nient­ly blind.

Just recent­ly Minister of National Security Robert Montague told the police that as part of a part­ing gift to out­go­ing Commissioner Carl Williams the admin­is­tra­tion would be mov­ing to com­plete the MoU with INDECOM and the JCF and would have it signed expe­di­tious­ly in hon­or of Dr Carl Williams. That is my going away gift to him,” Montague told police offi­cers and oth­er guests at the JCF annu­al devo­tion exercise.

As I have con­sis­tent­ly said, no one denies them their over­sight, but it can­not be a type of super­vi­sion head­ed by their cronies, designed to put police offi­cers in jeop­ardy for doing their jobs.
Bruce Golding may have thought this a cru­el joke when he stuck the Jamaican peo­ple with it, but no one is laugh­ing now.
The eyes of the peo­ple final­ly see for them­selves the con­se­quences of this dan­ger­ous law.

To the cyn­ics and oth­ers unable to think for themselves.
Those who have crit­i­cized me for con­sis­tent­ly speak­ing to the flawed nature of the INDECOM Act, I say the following.
♦ If the law was per­fect why is a MoU required to bridge the gap between two Agencies?
♦Why are the con­sti­tu­tion­al rights of offi­cers vio­lat­ed in the giv­ing of sworn affi­davits when no oth­er Jamaicans are required to do so?
♦ If the law was per­fect and should remain ‚why are no oth­er police depart­ments in the west­ern world forced to give sworn state­ments even while they are trau­ma­tized, con­trary to their con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly guar­an­teed rights ?
♦Why will the Government now pay the legal cost police offi­cers incur in deal­ing with INDECOM?
♦Why would mem­bers of the Parliamentary select com­mit­tee hav­ing heard evi­dence from both sides, con­clud­ed that the issues inher­ent­ly wrong with the law prob­a­bly can­not be fixed by a MoU?

I wish I had a dol­lar for every per­son who has said to me ” I have read the INDECOM Act and noth­ing is wrong with it.”
Never mind those who have insist­ed that if offi­cers are fol­low­ing the laws they have noth­ing to fear.
Those are the talk­ing points of vil­lage lawyers and know-noth­ing trolls who speak or write because they can put a few words together.
Understanding fun­da­men­tal­ly the con­se­quen­tial adverse effects a law like the INDECOM Act can have on law enforce­ment requires law enforce­ment expe­ri­ence , law enforce­ment input, or a seri­ous desire to under­stand the minu­tia of the con­se­quences such a law can have.

There was no desire to co-opt the views of the law enforce­ment com­mu­ni­ty into the frame­work of the law. As a con­se­quence, the Golding Administration stuck it to the police with dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences to the country.
The par­ti­san polit­i­cal shills will now do one of two things . They will either be death­ly silent or they will come gun­ning for me with their cat­tle-prods and pitch forks for dar­ing to crit­i­cize their polit­i­cal idols, and a law they do not understand, .
As one who is more close­ly aligned with Golding’s Party I do not care about crit­ics assail­ing me, they were wrong since my argu­ments start­ed after read­ing the law, so ful­ly and they are wrong now.
At the same time Jamaicans with whom I dis­agree polit­i­cal­ly, have come out against the law and have been exco­ri­at­ed for hav­ing the back­bone to do so. Damion Crawford comes to mind.

This mur­der­ous crime wave which has gripped the Island is not ordinary.
People who ordi­nar­i­ly nev­er would com­mit cer­tain crimes are now embold­ened to engage in crim­i­nal rape and mur­der of lit­tle girls in the most heinous demon­ic fashion.
They do in so indi­vid­u­al­ly like dan­ger­ous preda­tors and in packs, like beasts of prey they pounce on the weak and defense​less​.so ful­ly con­ver­sant that they will not be caught, and and worse will nev­er be prosecuted.
Marching and pray­ing can­not, and will not do a sin­gle thing to solve crime.

A total repeal of the INDECOM Act is a must.
The law must be redone with appro­pri­ate law enforce­ment input and the lev­el-head­ed approach nec­es­sary ‚so that cit­i­zens wronged have redress . It must how­ev­er have the nec­es­sary safe­guards and pro­tec­tions for our law enforce­ment offi­cers to do their jobs with­out being intim­i­dat­ed about the dis­tinct pos­si­bil­i­ty of impris­on­ment and finan­cial ruin , or both, for doing their jobs.

Clean up the cor­rupt Judiciary which is active­ly engaged in cor­rupt prac­tices . Judges are cor­rupt­ly return­ing dan­ger­ous crim­i­nals to the streets after they have killed mul­ti­ple times, and are arrested.

Pass truth in sen­tenc­ing laws which send mur­der­ers ‚rapists , and those who engage in oth­er dan­ger­ous crimes to prison for life.
Remove from the hands of the cor­rupt lib­er­al judges the abil­i­ty to decide the sen­tence in cas­es of mur­der , rape extor­tion and racketeering.
Encourage investors to come in and invest after remov­ing the ridicu­lous bureau­crat­ic imped­i­ments to eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment in the pri­vate sector.
Offer tax incen­tives to return­ing residents.
Hire new judges from the pros­e­cu­tion side ‚so that crim­i­nals will receive the memo that they will not be reward­ed for their lives of crime.

Anything out­side these actions are futile use­less pandering.

This cou­ple is rumored to be respon­si­ble for the killing of Nile Brown the for­mer Burger King employ­ee who was alleged­ly mur­dered and stuffed into a bar­rel and dumped.

Anyone with infor­ma­tion on this cou­ple , or may have infor­ma­tion which may assist law enforce­ment to bet­ter pre­pare an air­tight case against the per­pe­tra­tors of this crime, are encour­aged to speak to the police in con­fi­dence ‚through the var­i­ous medi­ums which have been set up to allow for the relay­ing of infor­ma­tion in strict confidence.

Brown

Please tell law enforce­ment what you know .
In order to break this cycle of vio­lence we must first break the cul­ture which says “infama fi ded”.
Over the last sev­er­al decades Jamaica has lost tens of thou­sands of it’s peo­ple for no good rea­son oth­er than to sat­is­fy the blood-lust of the Island’s killers.
Our coun­try has been engaged in a kind of unde­clared civ­il war . A war that the Island’s killers are all to proud to talk about and one the Island’s polit­i­cal and self appoint­ed elites have stu­pid­ly refused to acknowledge.
It is up to every well mean­ing Jamaican to look out for them­selves and their neigh­bors by assist­ing decent good police offi­cers who are not cor­rupt­ed by whats happening.
Hopefully by then the self appoint­ed elites and the polit­i­cal lead­er­ship will have extract­ed their heads from their own ass­es long enough to rec­og­nize the danger.

What has the aver­age Jamaican gained but heartache, pain , and dis­tress from allow­ing the pop­u­lar cul­ture to dic­tate that they should not tell what they know?
The crim­i­nal under­world has metas­ta­sized expo­nen­tial­ly because of that tac­it acqui­es­cence and def­er­en­tial treatment

.
We have main­tained for years that both polit­i­cal par­ties thrive in the chaos of crime and corruption.
Nevertheless the peo­ple can work with their Police to set the exam­ple, toward the out­comes they seek.
Ultimately the cor­rupt judi­cia­ry which has been col­lud­ing with the crim­i­nal defense fra­ter­ni­ty, will come to real­ize that throw­ing out, and draw­ing out good cas­es under ridicu­lous guis­es must come to an end.

Later found mur­dered and stuffed in a barrel.

As a pub­lic ser­vice to Jamaica we post this list of the most want­ed men in west­ern Jamaica accord­ing to Jamaican authorities.
We hope that with con­tin­ued vig­i­lance on the part of peo­ple every­where we will be able to bring some san­i­ty to the killing and car­nage which is rife on the Island.

Over the years I have talked exten­sive­ly about the seri­ous cri­sis of crime in Jamaica. I have also offered up tan­gi­ble, work­able solu­tions which I fun­da­men­tal­ly believe will result in a seis­mic bend in the arc of crime.
The solu­tions I have offered over the years have been tried and proven meth­ods and prac­tices which are not nec­es­sar­i­ly unique to Jamaica but are tai­lored to suit our Jamaican prob­lem backed up by years of expe­ri­ence and research.

All too often in my com­men­taries I speak direct­ly to the part women play in the ever evolv­ing cul­ture of crime.
In ‚many cas­es women are far more instru­men­tal in the com­mis­sion of crimes than their male coun­ter­parts with the excep­tion of actu­al­ly pulling a trigger.

Women are provo­ca­teurs of crime. They active­ly goad , cajole and even ridicule men into com­mit­ting crimes. In many instances hav­ing sex­u­al rela­tions with many women rests direct­ly on whether men are able to sup­ply the pro­ceeds from crime or not.

Women act as coun­selors, they aid and abet their male coun­ter­parts in their capac­i­ties as moth­ers , girl­friends , sis­ters and friends to men whom have made deci­sions to live out­sides the bound­aries of the laws.

Over the years I have writ­ten exten­sive­ly about this and have been the recip­i­ent of much push-back , not to men­tion ridicule and ver­bal assaults for dar­ing to relay those truths.

One of the most con­tro­ver­sial and top­i­cal issues is the abuse of women , both ver­bal and physical.

One of my obser­va­tions as a police offi­cer in our coun­try and hav­ing worked many years ago in a law office in my adopt­ed home is that when we get into the meat of the mat­ter , many women will con­fess to have been the first to throw a blow in a con­fronta­tion with their sig­nif­i­cant other.
As incon­ve­nient a truth as that is to women and their sup­port­ers , deny­ing facts does noth­ing to solve problems.

Notwithstanding, the nar­ra­tive is gen­er­al­ly cen­tered around the notion that men should nev­er put their hands on women.
How about every­one, men and women, keep their hands to them­selves, how about a sce­nario in which our peo­ple do not see phys­i­cal vio­lence as the only means to con­flict resolution?
That aside, the point of this Article to to address the role women have played and con­tin­ue to play in the smol­der­ing caul­dron of crime which is threat­en­ing to engulf the entire Island.

Jamaican women have been at the tip of the spear in the enhance­ment and fur­ther­ance of the objec­tives of the Island’s crime fig­ures as long as we have had crim­i­nal activity.Much of their activ­i­ties have been roman­ti­cized and even laud­ed when they should have been con­demned and punished.
This is his­tor­i­cal, from fig­ures like Three Finger Jack , to Rigen, Coppa, Sandokan, Starky, Anthony Brown and George Flask , Jim Brown, Duddus Coke, and every oth­er crim­i­nal , Jamaican women have been con­sis­tent in pro­vid­ing aid and com­fort , offer­ing up even their bod­ies in the process.

Why then would any­one be sur­prised that the demon­ic killers have now turned on of all peo­ple, women?
There are instances where women have out of fear for their lives and that of their fam­i­lies suc­cumbed to the dic­tates of area dons.
I want to make it clear that I am not in any way try­ing to deny them that fear born out of their desire to survive.
It is the women who par­tic­i­pate in crim­i­nal con­duct as acces­sories before and after the fact , or as prin­ci­pals even, that must take respon­si­bil­i­ty for this.

As I have said in pre­vi­ous arti­cles, from my expe­ri­ences, Jamaican crim­i­nals love to eat and they love sex.
Find out where their moth­ers and girl­friends live and you have dra­mat­i­cal­ly increased you chance of find­ing them.
Jamaican women have been will­ing par­tic­i­pants and exu­ber­ant sup­port­ers of the pur­vey­ors of the Island’s cul­ture of crime.
They are equal­ly as guilty as the men.

The sup­port they offer extends beyond the bound­aries of phys­i­cal sup­port but can be seen in their lying state­ments that they were wit­ness­es to police sum­mar­i­ly killing want­ed gang­sters in their bed at 3.00 am.
Their mass pres­ence on demon­stra­tion lines over the last sev­er­al decades in sup­port of the Island’s most blood thirsty crim­i­nals has been tremen­dous in the Nation’s advance into a Narco and crim­i­nal state.

There is no way that you sow into per­pe­tu­ity with­out reap­ing a harvest.
That is not to say that Jamaican women have not already paid dear­ly . They have lost their sons and hus­bands , their nephews, broth­ers and boyfriends , their cousins , uncles and friends.
But the thing we must nev­er for­get is that wild ani­mals are wild ani­mals who have no conscience.
They like the smell and the taste of blood .

That includes all blood
It was just a mat­ter of time before they turned on women.
The rash of killing of women and girls was a long time com­ing. Many women know who the killers are, yet they chose not to assist law-enforce­ment with infor­ma­tion, despite the myr­i­ad avenues avail­able for them to do so in con­fi­dence and safety.

Whether we under­stand or not that this is a fight , not just for the soul but the very exis­tence of our coun­try the facts remain that it is.
Our coun­try is very far gone despite the rhetoric you hear about progress made.
There is no progress or pros­per­i­ty in this Serengeti of mur­der and mayhem.
As long as the INDECOM Act which was cre­at­ed by Bruce Golding to neuter law enforce­ment remain the inces­sant slaugh­ter will increase.
The cow­ard­ly ani­mals who take life at will know they have the upper hand against law enforcement.
Much more blood will run until a stu­pid peo­ple real­ize that they must unite against the com­mon enemy .
Crime !

Thirty five-year-old con­struc­tion work­er Phillip Brown was arrest­ed last December and charged with mur­der after he con­fessed to killing 31-year-old Kerry-Ann Wilson.

Brown alleged­ly con­fessed to Police that he killed Wilson his girl­friend after she told him she was preg­nant with anoth­er man’s child.
According to Media reports it is alleged that the woman was beat­en to death and that Brown wrapped her body in a tar­pau­lin and tried to dump her in a gul­ly near Crystal Towers Apartment on Old Hope Road in St Andrew, where they had lived together.

It is very impor­tant to remem­ber that Kerry-ann Wilson was preg­nant at the time of her death. The Police are report­ed­ly con­sid­er­ing whether he should be charged with the death of the fetus as well.
That this has to be con­sid­ered in 2017 speaks vol­umes about the archa­ic nature of the nation’s laws. It also speaks to the qual­i­ty of the Legislature as a cred­i­ble body which has respon­si­bil­i­ty to devel­op leg­is­la­tion to ade­quate­ly pro­tect the population.

Prosecutors also told the court that the police were not cer­tain about Brown’s men­tal state and were also wor­ried that he may abscond bail and inter­fere with the wit­ness­es in the matter.
♦According to the bail Act a court may deny bail for an accused depend­ing on the seri­ous­ness of the crime.
There is no crime more seri­ous than murder !

♦ According to the Bail Act ‚an accused may be denied bail if he/​she is like­ly to inter­fere with poten­tial witnesses.
According to the Prosecutor the accused at best needs psy­cho­log­i­cal eval­u­a­tion and is like­ly to inter­fere with the wit­ness­es in the case.
One of the tech­niques employed by the Island’s killers is to mur­der wit­ness­es to their crim­i­nal actions.
It has worked effec­tive­ly in get­ting them off mur­der cas­es, but has also had a damp­en­ing effect on the will­ing­ness of peo­ple to tell police what they saw.

Judges have a respon­si­bil­i­ty as offi­cers of the court to fol­low and apply the law. Judges have no right to sup­plant the laws with their own emo­tions and social views.
Judges must seri­ous­ly con­sid­er refus­ing bail when the crime is of a cer­tain nature, ie mur­der, that is the spir­it and intent of the law.
When the crime is as egre­gious as mur­der , much less the killing of a help­less inno­cent preg­nant woman and a defense­less fetus , what more could a court want to see to say no to bail?
Those con­sid­er­a­tions alone are enough for any sane judge, and hon­est un-cor­rupt­ed Judge, in any juris­dic­tion where there is a desire to not only fol­low the law, but send a mes­sage that inno­cent vic­tims and their fam­i­lies will not be dou­bly penalized.

When the poten­tial of inter­fer­ing with, (killing), wit­ness­es in this case is added to the mix, a judge is duty bound to deny bail.
The fact that this man killed his girl­friend , who just hap­pen to be preg­nant , is more than enough rea­son to lock him away from society.
Not for Judge Pettigrew-Collins.

Judge Pettigrew-Collins offered the killer bail in the sum of one mil­lion dol­lars , she ordered him to sur­ren­der his trav­el doc­u­ments, and to report to the Police dai­ly. A stop order was also placed on him at all ports and he was ordered to relo­cate to live with his father in Kingston 10 area.

We are all well aware that all kinds of mur­der­ers have been allowed to leave through the nations porous ports , that includes cop killers.
We also know that any­one can move around the small Island , kill any­one and be exact­ly where they ought to be as dic­tat­ed by a court.
Effectively the accused killer in this case can hand over his papers to author­i­ties , move across town to live his father kill the wit­ness­es in the case and still report to the Half Way Tree Police as man­dat­ed each day and if he so choos­es. He may also chose to sim­ply hop on a flight and be out of the coun­try , or take a boat and be shut­tled out the coun­try as Duppy film is rumored to have been.

None of these con­sid­er­a­tions mat­tered to Judge Pettigrew-Collins.
Anthony Williams lawyer for the accused, argued that his client had a right to bail and that the seri­ous­ness of the offence was not suf­fi­cient rea­son to deny him that right.
This has got to be the twi­light zone, dou­ble mur­der is not suf­fi­cient to deny bail. On what plan­et would that line of argu­ment hold sway in a court of law except in Jamaica?
“There is no doubt that he gave a con­fes­sion state­ment and it is, indeed, a seri­ous offence, but there are oth­er con­sid­er­a­tions,” the lawyer told the judge.

That state­ment is incon­sis­tent with the bail act but the judge did not cor­rect him, she acqui­esced and grant­ed the dou­ble mur­der­er bail.
The rule of law be damned.
In an age when sto­ries abound that crim­i­nal defense lawyers are meet­ing with judges han­dling seri­ous cas­es and hand­ing them mon­ey to cir­cum­vent the process by let­ting mur­der­ers out of jail ‚what are we sup­posed to think about this case as has been the case with count­less others?

Are we to con­tin­ue believ­ing in the fideli­ty of the courts, or are we going to pull our heads from the sand and face the stark real­i­ty that the courts are as much con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed with the cor­rupt­ing influ­ence of mon­ey as all oth­er pub­lic sec­tor enti­ties are?
Just this morn­ing some­one asked me to be a mem­ber of a social media group which will sup­pos­ed­ly be mil­i­tat­ing against vio­lence against women in Jamaica.

Jamaican women, are well rep­re­sent­ed in every stra­ta of the soci­ety unlike oth­er countries.
More so now than their male coun­ter­parts, as a result of Government and oth­er poli­cies which have favored women for decades.
This has result­ed in a mar­gin­al­iza­tion of our young men and a sense of anger in them which is now play­ing out with trag­ic consequences.
However, it is the actions of women like Judge  Pettigrew-Collins which are jeop­ar­diz­ing the lives of every Jamaican not just women and their unborn children .

A Jamaica Gleaner report on Wednesday February crowed “Jamaica Issues First Sentence Under Anti-Gang Legislation”.
Even as anoth­er head­line said “Anti-cor­rup­tion law gets the nod — Holness says Gov’t could­n’t delay pas­sage any longer.

If you are a Jamaican who care about the wan­ton slaugh­ter which occur dai­ly on the Island with­out the per­pe­tra­tors ever get­ting their just desserts you will be elat­ed about this.
In fact you may even begin to think that final­ly Jamaican soci­ety ‚and it’s author­i­ties intend to do some­thing about crime.
This anti crime leg­is­la­tion which we are told was intend­ed to stem the wave of crime on the Island was passed back in 2014. We are in the sec­ond month of 2017 and these are the very first convictions .
But wait there’s more.

According to the report .…